Subject: Re: 1.0 Ethernet weirdness
To: None <port-sparc@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Greg Earle <earle@isolar.tujunga.ca.us.tujunga.ca.us>
List: port-sparc
Date: 04/21/1995 03:15:48
I'm surprised that anyone didn't know that Suns use the same Ethernet address
for all of the interfaces.  And as people have noted, to use SunLink DNI for
DECnet addresses, you have to be able to change the MAC layer address so as
to fit DEC's whacko scheme of embedding the Node/Area in the MAC address.

Back when I worked at Sun I screamed at the SunLink DNI folks because they
stupidly designed their installation software to tack on the DNI startup at the
end of /etc/rc.local.  This, of course, happens after the NFS daemons have
started up, so on any NFS server that subsequently became a DECnet node via
DNI, their clients would get their "real" Ethernet addresses into their ARP
caches and then promptly get several minutes of "NFS server <X> not responding"
messages as soon as the DNI startup changed the Ethernet address.  Duh.

> Of course, Ethernet hasn't been an option on a Sun for a long time [if ever;
> I don't know if Sun-1s had Ethernet standard or not]).

Not that anyone cares, but Sun-1's came with both 3 Mb/sec Ethernet and 10 Mb
Ethernet standard ...

Before I quit working for Sun I saw some Sun-2/100U's (Sun-1/100's upgraded
with the Sun-2 "Multibus Prime" CPU cards) still working as printer servers in
Mountain View.

Wrigley's Fun Fact #127,

	- Greg

P.S. Sorry for the non-"port-sparc" content :-)